cult films Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Just attempting to make a small list of any large field of film will immediately invoke dissatisfaction. It doesn't matter if you cloak it in your own personal favorites, or try to narrow it down to a specific theme. Someone, somewhere will say you're missing X, or have forgotten Y. I get that, and I try not to be one of those people when I scoff at lists I don't agree with.

But sometimes it's just inevitable, especially when the lists talk about super-loved geek fare or cult favorites. Both have die-hard fans, and when it comes to the cult genre, it's fans who adore and fight for a film without having met seas of marketing and press. The movie itself is what inspires the cult following, rising the film from the forgotten piles of dust and into the never-forgotten ranks of cult infamy.

So I have to say, I'm pretty darned surprised at Entertainment Weekly's The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83. (It's pretty much this list, without the older films.) At the very least, they narrowed the time frame down, but as soon as I saw "essential," I knew there would be holes, and strangely placed films.

When evaluating new movies, sometimes a critic will try to envision their staying power. It goes without saying that most movies have no shelf life; they're designed for one opening weekend, or perhaps a few months of buzz leading to an award, but that's it. A year from now, people will be ignoring them on airplanes and then they'll be on sale in the DVD bargain bin. Only a very few titles enter into the general zeitgeist forever, becoming a "cult film." A cult film can be a resurrected flop, something like The Wizard of Oz or Donnie Darko, or it can be a beloved hit, such as Casablanca or the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings films. The only constant is that it's impossible to predict. When I first reviewed Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998), I thought it suffered in comparison to Fargo, but now it has become a cult classic even bigger than its predecessor. Regardless, I thought I'd look at some of the movies currently playing on less than 400 screens and guess their fates.

I'll start with an easy one: Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (316 screens). This is Burton and Johnny Depp's sixth film together, and they bring out the very best instincts in one another. They remind me of no less than Tod Browning and Lon Chaney's sinister collaborations during the silent era. (Their 1927 film The Unknown needs to be seen by everyone.) Depp gets to indulge in his taste for disguise (and funny voices) while Burton taps into his childlike nightmares for new images and ideas. Sure, they will probably never really make a grown-up movie, but several of their collaborations have already stood the test of time, and at least two: Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994) have cracked the edges of cult status. In fact, I'd go so far as to add Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Depp's Dead Man and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to make a great cult film festival.